"What do you consider your biggest sacrifice?…

Despite being an intensely private person, Jack almost told Latasha what had been on his mind to get a fresh viewpoint. Such a reaction surprised him, even though he acknowledged having developed a strong affinity toward the woman. Except for his detour to the Newton Memorial Hospital, they had been closely working together for some six hours and had fallen into a natural familiarity. When Jack had arrived at the Boston medical examiner's office, they'd taken over what was supposed to be the library, but the shelves were mostly empty, in hope of future funding. The room's major asset was a large library table, onto which Jack had spread the contents of Craig's malpractice file and organized them so he'd be able to find anything in particular if there was a need. At the far end of the table were several open pizza boxes, paper plates, and large cups. Neither had eaten much.

Both had been consumed by the conundrum of Patience Stanhope.

They had also carried in the dual-headed stereo-dissecting microscope and, sitting on opposite sides of the table, had spent several hours opening and tracing all the coronary arteries. Like their larger and more proximal brethren, all the distal vessels were normal and clear. Jack and Latasha had paid particular attention to those branches serving the heart's conduction system.

The last stage of examining the heart was to be the microscopic. They'd taken specimens from all areas of the heart but again concentrated in and around the conduction system. Before Jack had arrived, Latasha had made a series of frozen sections from a small sampling, and the very first thing they had done on his arrival was to stain them and then put them out to dry. At the moment, they were in the wings waiting for their cue.

Just after they'd finished staining the slides, Allan Smitham had called. He apparently had been pleased to hear from Latasha, at least it seemed so to Jack from the side of the rather personal conversation he was forced to hear even though he was trying not to. He felt uncomfortable that he was intruding, but the good news was that Allan was eager to help and would run the toxicology screen immediately.

"I didn't come up with any new ideas," Jack said in response to Latasha's question about what was on his mind. Back when his eyes had strayed to the clock and its staccato movement had hypnotized him into thoughts of his intimidatingly imminent marriage, he was supposed to have been trying to think up new theories about Patience. He'd related to Latasha all his old theories by essentially repeating what he'd told Alexis on the phone en route to the hospital. Throwing all pretenses of self-respect to the wind, he included the drug overdose/wrong drug idea even though in hindsight it sounded inane, almost dim-witted, and Latasha had responded appropriately.

"I didn't have any eureka moment, either," Latasha admitted. "I might have laughed at some of your ideas, but I have to give you credit for creativity. I can't come up with nothing, you know what I'm saying?"

Jack smiled. "Maybe if you combined what I've told you with some of this material, you would," Jack said. He gestured at the case-file material on the table. "There's quite a cast of characters. There's depositions here of four times the number of witnesses actually called."

"I'd be happy to read some if you could tell me which you think would be potentially the most helpful."

"If you were to read any, read Craig Bowman's and Jordan Stanhope's. As defendant and plaintiff, they occupy center stage. Actually, I want to reread both their recollections of Patience's symptoms. For sake of argument, if she had been poisoned as we're considering, subtle symptoms would be crucial. You know, as well as I, that some poisons are nigh impossible to find in the complicated soup of chemicals that make up a human being.

More than likely, we'll have to tell Allan what to look for in order for him to find it."

"Where are Dr. Bowman's and Mr. Stanhope's depositions?"

Jack picked them up. He had placed them in their own stack. Both were thick. He reached across and gave them to Latasha.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed, feeling their weight. "What is this, War and Peace? How many pages do we have here?"

"Craig Bowman's deposition went on for days. The court reporter has to take down every word."

"I'm not sure I'm up to this at nearly two a.m.," Latasha said. She let the volumes thump down on the table in front of her.

"It's all dialogue with lots of spacing. It's actually easy to breeze through them for the most part."

"What are these scientific reprints doing here?" Latasha said, picking up the small stack of scientific publications.

"Dr. Bowman is the lead author in most of them and a contributing author in the rest. Craig's lawyer had considered introducing them as supporting evidence of Craig's commitment to medicine as a way of blunting the plaintiff's stratagem of character assassination."

"I remember this one when it came out in the Journal," Latasha said, holding up Craig's seminal article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Once again, Jack was duly impressed. "You find time to read such esoterica?"

"This isn't esoteric stuff," Latasha said with a disapproving chuckle.

"Membrane physiology is key in just about every field of medicine these days, particularly pharmacology and immunology even infectious disease and cancer."

"Okay, okay!" Jack said, holding up his hands as if to protect himself. "I take back what I said. My problem is that I went to medical school in the last century."

"That's a lame excuse," Latasha said. She flipped through the pages of Craig's paper. "Sodium channel function is the basis of muscle and nerve

function. If they don't work, nothing works."

"All right already," Jack said. "You made your point. I'll bone up on it."

Latasha's cell phone suddenly sprang to life. In the silence, it made both of them jump.

Latasha snatched it up, glanced at the LCD screen, and then flipped it open.

"What's happening?" she said without preamble, pressing the phone to her ear.

Jack tried to hear the voice on the other end but couldn't. He assumed and hoped it was Allan.

The conversation was pointedly short. Latasha merely said, "You got it,"

and flipped her phone shut. She stood up.

"Who was it?" Jack asked.

"Allan," Latasha said. "He wants us to pay him a visit in his lab, which is just around the corner. I believe it's worth the effort if we're thinking of keeping him busy with our stuff. Are you game?"

"Are you kidding?" Jack questioned rhetorically. He pushed his chair back and got to his feet.

Jack hadn't realized that the Boston medical examiner's office was on the periphery of the vast Boston City Hospital Medical Center complex.

Despite the hour, they passed a number of medical-center employees, including several medical students, walking between various buildings. No one seemed in a hurry, despite the hour. Everyone was enjoying the warmth and silky texture of the air. Although technically still spring, it felt like a summer night.

The toxicology lab was a mere two short blocks' walk in a new, eight-story glass-and-steel structure.

In the elevator on the way up to the sixth floor, Jack looked over at Latasha.

Her dark eyes were riveted on the floor indicator display, and her face was reflecting her rightful fatigue.

"I apologize in advance if I say anything inappropriate," Jack said, "but I have the sense that this special effort Allan Smitham is willing to devote to this case is because of unrequited feelings he has for you."

"Maybe," Latasha said equivocally.

"I hope that accepting his aid doesn't put you in an uncomfortable position."

"I think I can handle it," Latasha said in a tone that proclaimed: End of discussion.

The lab was state-of-the-art and almost deserted. In addition to Allan, there were only two other people there, both lab technicians who were busily engaged at the far side of the generous-sized room. There were three aisles of benches groaning under the weight of gleaming new equipment.

Allan was a striking-looking African American with a closely trimmed mustache and goatee that gave him an intimidatingly Mephistophelean air.

Adding to his imposing appearance was a heavily muscular frame barely concealed by a white lab coat with rolled-up sleeves over a form-fitting black T-shirt. His skin was a burnished mahogany, a shade or two darker than Latasha's. His eyes were bright and fixated on his old college friend.

Latasha introduced Jack, who rated only a quick but firm handshake and a rapid, appraising glance. Allan was unabashedly interested in Latasha, whom he lavished with a broad smile filled with startlingly white teeth.

"You shouldn't make yourself such a stranger, girl," Allan said as he gestured toward his tiny, utilitarian office. He ended up sitting at his desk while Latasha and Jack took two straight chairs in his line of sight.

"You have an impressive lab," Jack said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "Seems lean on staff, though."

"Just for this shift," Allan said. He was still smiling at Latasha. "In terms of the number of employees, the difference between us and the day shift is like night and day." He laughed at his own joke. Jack had the feeling he wasn't lacking self-esteem or humor.

"What did you find with our samples?" Latasha asked, cutting to the chase.

"Ah, yes," Allan said, steepling his fingers while his elbows rested on the desk. "You gave me a little background in your note, which I'd like to go over to make sure I understand. The patient died of a heart attack approximately eight months ago. She was embalmed, interred, and recently exhumed. What you want to do is rule out drug involvement."

"Let's put it more succinctly," Latasha said. "Her manner of death was assumed to be natural. We want to be sure it wasn't homicide."

"Okay," Allan intoned as if mulling over what he wanted to say next.

"What was the result of the screen?" Latasha asked impatiently. "Why are you dragging this out?"

Jack inwardly cringed at Latasha's tone. It made him uncomfortable that she was being less than gracious with Allan, who was doing them an enormous favor. For Jack, it was becoming progressively clear there was something between them that he didn't know and didn't want to know.

"I want to be sure you interpret the findings correctly," Allan said defensively.

"We're both medical examiners," Latasha shot back. "I think we are relatively informed about the limitations of a toxicology screen."

"Informed enough to know the predictive value of a negative test is only about forty percent?" Allan questioned, eyebrows raised. "And that is with a recently deceased, not embalmed, corpse."

"So you are saying the toxicology screen was negative."

"I am," Allan said. "It was definitely negative."

"My God, it's like pulling teeth," Latasha complained. She rolled her eyes and flapped her arms impetuously.

"What drugs constitute your screen?" Jack asked. "Is digitalis included?"

"Digitalis is included," Allan said as he half-stood to hand Jack the lab's toxicology screen drug list.

Jack scanned the sheet. He was impressed with the number of drugs included. "What methods do you use?"

"We use a combination of chromatography and enzyme immunoassay for our screens."

"Do you have gas chromatography-mass spectrometry?" Jack asked.

"Bet your ass we got mass-spec," Allan said proudly. "But if you want me to use the artillery, you're going to have to give me an idea of what I'm looking for."

"We can give you only a general idea at the moment," Jack said.

"According to the symptoms the patient was reported to have had if drugs or poisons were involved, we would be looking for something capable of producing a markedly slow heart rate unresponsive to all attempts at pacing and a respiratory depressant, since she was also described as being cyanotic."

"You're still talking about a shitload of potential drugs and poisons," Allan said. "Without more specifics, you're asking me for a miracle!"

"I know," Jack admitted. "But Latasha and I are going to go back and brainstorm to see if we can come up with some likely candidates."

"You'd better," Allan said. "Otherwise, this is probably going to be a fruitless exercise. First, I have to figure out what to ignore with all the

embalming fluid on board."

"I know," Jack repeated.

"Why are you even considering homicide?" Allan asked. "If you don't mind my asking."

Jack and Latasha exchanged a glance, unsure of how much to say.

"We just did the post a few hours ago!" Latasha said. "We didn't find diddly-squat. There was no cardiac pathology, which doesn't make sense, considering the history."

"Interesting," Allan said pensively. He locked eyes with Latasha. "Let me get this straight. You want me to do all this work, take up my whole night, and do it on the sly to boot. Is that what you are saying?"

"Of course we want you to do it!" Latasha snapped. "What's the matter with you? Why else would we be sitting here?"

"I don't mean you and the doc here," Allan said, gesturing toward Jack. He then pointed at Latasha. "I mean you personally."

"Yeah, I want you to do it, okay," Latasha said. She stood up.

"Okay," Allan said. There was a trace of a satisfied smile on his face.

Latasha walked out of the office.

Surprised at the sudden ending of the meeting, Jack got up and fumbled for one of his cards. "Just in case you want to ask me something," he said as he put it on Allan's desk. He helped himself to one of Allan's from a small Plexiglas holder. "I appreciate your help. Thank you."

"No problem," Allan said. The lingering smirk was still apparent.

Jack caught up to Latasha at the elevator. He didn't say anything until they were on their way down.

"That was a rather precipitous ending," Jack said. He pretended not to look at Latasha by watching the floor indicator.

"Yeah, well, he was getting on my nerves. He's such a cocky bastard."

"I sensed he didn't have a self-esteem problem."

Latasha laughed and perceptively relaxed a degree.

They walked out into the night. It was going on three, but there were still people on the street. As they neared the medical examiner's office, Latasha spoke up: "I suppose you wondered why I appeared somewhat rude."

"It crossed my mind," Jack admitted.

"Allan and I were tight the last year of college, but then something happened that gave me insight into his personality that I didn't like." She keyed open the front door and waved to the security person. As they started up the single flight of stairs, she continued: "I got a scare that I was pregnant. When I told him, his response was to ditch me. I couldn't even get a call back, so I wrote him off. The irony is that I wasn't pregnant. During the last year or so when he found out I was here at the ME office, he's tried to get us to connect up, but I'm not interested. I'm sorry if it was uncomfortable back there in his office."

"No need to apologize," Jack said. "As I said on the way over, I hope accepting his help won't cause a problem."

"With as many years as there have been, I'd thought I'd handle myself better than I did. But just seeing him made me pissed about the episode all over again. You'd think I would have gotten over it."

They walked into the library. The clutter was exactly as they'd left it.

"How about we take a look at the slides we stained?" Latasha suggested.

"Maybe you should go home and get some shut-eye," Jack said. "There's no reason for you to pull an all-nighter. I mean I love the help and the company, but this is asking way too much."

"You're not getting rid of me that easy," Latasha said with a coy smile. "I learned back in medical school that for me, when it's this late, it's better to just stay up. Plus, I'd love to solve this case."

"Well, I think I'm going to take a drive out to Newton."

"Back to the hospital?"

"Nope. Back to the Bowmans' house. I told my sister I'd look in on her husband to make sure he's not in a coma. Thanks to his depression, he's been mixing alcohol in the form of a single-malt scotch with some sort of sleeping pill."

"Yikes!" Latasha said. "I've had to post several people like that."

"Truthfully, with him I don't think it's much of a worry," Jack said. "He thinks far too much of himself. I doubt I'd even go if checking on him was the only reason. What I'm also going to do is check the biomarker assay kit he used with Patience to see if there is any reasonable reason to suspect he got a false positive. If it were a false positive, the possibility goes way up that the manner of death was not natural."

"What about suicide?" Latasha questioned. "You've never mentioned suicide even as a wildly remote possibility. How come?"

Jack absently scratched the back of his head. It was true that he'd not thought about suicide, and he wondered why. He let out a small chuckle, remembering how many cases he'd been involved with over the years where the apparent manner of death was ultimately not the correct manner. The last such case had involved the wife of the Iranian diplomat that was supposed to be suicide but had been homicide.

"I don't know why I haven't given even a passing thought about suicide,"

Jack said, "especially considering some of my other equally unlikely ideas."

"The little you've told me about the woman suggests she wasn't terribly happy."

"That's probably true," Jack admitted, "but that's the only thing the idea of suicide has going for it. We'll keep it in mind along with my hospital conspiracy idea. But now I'm going to head out to Newton. Of course, you're welcome to come, but I can't imagine why you'd want to."

"I'll stay," Latasha said. She pulled over Craig's and Jordan's deposition transcripts to a position in front of one of the chairs and sat down. "I'll do some background reading while you're gone. Where are the medical records?"

Jack reached for the correct pile and pushed it over against Craig's and Jordan's depositions.

Latasha picked up a short run of ECG that was sticking out of the stack.

"What's this?"

"It's a recording Dr. Bowman made when he first got to Patience's house.

Unfortunately it's almost useless. He couldn't even remember the lead. He had to give up doing the ECG because she was in such dire straits and rapidly worsening."

"Has anyone looked at it?"

"All the experts looked at it, but without knowing the lead and not being able to figure it out, they couldn't say much. They all agreed the marked bradycardia suggested an AV block. With that and other suggestive conduction abnormalities, they all felt it was at least consistent with a heart attack someplace in the heart."

"Too bad there's not more," Latasha said.

"I'm out of here so I can get back," Jack said. "My cell phone is on if you have a eureka moment or if Allan is able to pull off a miracle."

"See you when you get back," Latasha said. She was already speed-reading Craig's deposition.

AT THREE O'CLOCK in the morning, it was finally easy for Jack to drive in Boston. At some of the traffic lights on Massachusetts Avenue, Jack's Accent was the only vehicle waiting. On several occasions he debated ignoring the light when there also wasn't any cross-traffic, but he never did.

Jack didn't have a problem breaking rules he judged ridiculous, but traffic lights didn't fall into that category.

The Massachusetts Turnpike was another story. It wasn't crowded, but there was more traffic than he expected, and it wasn't all trucks. It made him wonder with amazement what so many people were doing out and about at such an hour.

The short drive to Newton gave Jack a chance to calm down from the near mania Latasha had unleashed when she said she had access to a toxicologist just at the point Jack was ready to throw in the towel. In a more relaxed state of mind, he was able to think about the whole situation considerably more rationally, and when he did so, it was clear what the most probable outcome was going to be. First, he was going to decide from lack of proof to the contrary that Patience Stanhope most likely died of a massive heart attack despite there being no obvious pathology; and second, that Fasano et al. were most likely behind the despicable assault on Craig and Alexis's children for trite economic reasons. Fasano had been unambiguously clear about the rationale when he directly threatened Jack.

Jack's mild mania had devolved into a tepid despondency by the time he arrived at the Bowmans' house. He found himself again wondering if the reason he was still in Boston and imagining out-of-the-box conspiracies had more to do with half-conscious fears of getting married in ten hours than trying to help his sister and brother-in-law.

Jack climbed out of the car clutching the umbrella he had the presence of mind to rescue from the backseat. He was parked next to Craig's Lexus.

Walking back to the street, he looked up and down for the police cruiser that had been there that morning. It was nowhere to be seen. So much for the surveillance. Turning back to the house, Jack trudged up the front walk.

His fatigue was catching up to him.

The house was dark, save for a little light filtering through the sidelights bordering the front door. Tilting his head back as he approached the front stoop, Jack checked the second-floor dormer windows. There were as black as onyx, reflecting back the light from a distant streetlamp.

Being relatively quiet, Jack slipped the key into the lock. He wasn't trying to be secretive, but at the same time, he preferred not to wake Craig if at all possible. It was at that point Jack remembered the alarm system. With the key in the lock, he tried to remember the code. As tired as his mind was, it took him a minute to recall it. Then he wondered if he was supposed to hit another button after the code. He didn't know. When he was as prepared as possible, he turned the key. The mechanism seemed loud in the nighttime stillness.

Quickly stepping inside in a minor panic, Jack gazed at the alarm keypad.

Luckily, the warning buzz he'd been expecting didn't sound, but he waited to be certain. The alarm was disarmed. A bright green dot of light suggested all was well. Jack closed the front door quietly. It was then that he became aware of the muted sound of the television coming from the direction of the great room. From the same direction came a small amount of light, spilling down the otherwise dark, main hallway.

Imagining that Craig might still be up or possibly asleep in front of the TV, Jack descended the corridor and walked into the great room. There was no Craig. The TV over the fireplace was turned to a cable news network, and the lights were on in that section, whereas the kitchen and the dining area were both dark.

On the coffee table in front of the couch stood Craig's nearly empty scotch bottle, an old-fashioned glass, and the TV remote. By force of habit, Jack walked over, picked up the remote, and turned the TV off. He then went back out in the hall. He looked up the stairs into the darkness and then down the length of the corridor to the study. A tiny bit of light was coming through the study's bow window from the streetlights, so it wasn't completely dark.

Jack debated what to do first: check Craig or check the biomarker assay kit.

It wasn't a hard decision. When faced with a choice, Jack generally did the less desirable chore or errand first, and in this instance that was certainly the one involving Craig. It wasn't that he thought it would be difficult, but he knew by going to his room he risked waking the man, which he did not want to do for a variety of reasons. The most important one was that he was convinced Craig would not consider Jack's presence a favor. In fact, the implication of neediness would most likely offend and irritate him.

Jack looked back up into the darkness. He'd never been on the second floor and had no idea where the master bedroom would be. Not willing to turn on any lights, Jack retreated to the kitchen. It was his experience that most families had a gadget drawer, and most gadget drawers had flashlights.

As it turned out, he was half-right. There was a flashlight in the gadget drawer, but the Bowmans' gadget drawer was in the laundry, not the kitchen. In keeping with the rest of the house and its contents, the flashlight was an impressive foot-long Maglite that cast a serious and concentrated beam when Jack turned it on. Believing he could put his hand over the lens and vary the amount of light, Jack returned with it to the stairs and started up.

Reaching the top, Jack let enough light escape through his fingers to see down the upstairs hallway, first in one direction and then the other. Multiple doors led off the hall on both sides and, as luck would have it, most of them were closed. Trying to decide where to start, Jack checked both directions again and determined the right hallway was half the length of the left.

Unsure of why, Jack started to his right. Picking a door at random, he

silently opened it and pushed it ajar enough to step across the threshold.

Slowly, he let light spread around the room. It certainly wasn't the master. It was one of the girls' bedrooms, and from the posters, photos, knick-knacks, and clothes strewn about, Jack could tell it was Tracy's. Back in the hall, Jack proceeded to the next door. He was about to open it when he noticed the doors at the very end of the hall facing him were double. Since all the other doors were single, it seemed a good bet that he'd found the master.

Keeping the flashlight mostly covered, Jack walked down to the double doors. He pressed the flashlight lens against his abdomen to block the light as he opened the right-hand door. It swung inward. As he slipped into the room, he could tell he was in the master suite for certain. He had stepped into deep-pile wall-to-wall carpet. For a moment, he didn't move. He strained to hear Craig's breathing, but the room was silent.

Slowly angling the flashlight, progressively more light extended deeper into the room. Out of the gloom emerged a king-size bed. Craig was lying on the side of the bed farthest from Jack.

For a moment Jack stood still, debating what he was going to do to make sure Craig was not comatose. Up until that moment, he hadn't given it much thought, but now that he was in the room, he had to. Although waking Craig would be definitive, it was not an option. Ultimately Jack thought he'd just walk over and listen to Craig's breathing. If that sounded normal, Jack was willing to accept it as positive proof the man was okay, despite it being far from scientific.

Reducing the light again, Jack started across the room, moving more from memory than visually. A meager amount of ambient light was managing to finger its way through the dormer window from the street. It was enough to give Jack a vague outline of the larger pieces of furniture. Reaching the foot of the bed, Jack stopped and strained to hear the intermittent sibilant sounds of sleep. The room was deathly quiet. Jack felt a rush of adrenaline. To his horror, there was no sound of respiration. Craig was not breathing!

22

NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS

FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2006

3:25 A.M.

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The next few seconds were a blur for Jack. The instant he realized his brother-in-law was not breathing, he lunged forward with the intention of rounding the corner of the bed to get to Craig's side in the shortest possible time. There he would whip back the covers, rapidly evaluate the man's status, and begin CPR if it was appropriate.

The sudden sideward movement possibly saved Jack's life. In the next instant Jack realized that he was not alone in the room. There was another figure, clad in black, making him all but invisible, who streaked out of the open bathroom doorway. The individual was brandishing a large club that he swung in a wide arc at the spot where Jack's head had been.

Although the blow missed Jack's head, it did hit his left shoulder. Luckily, it was a glancing blow that did not impact with its full force. Still, it sent a shooting, searing pain into the core of Jack's body, weakening his knees in the process.

Jack was still clutching the flashlight, the beam of which raced haphazardly around the room as he scrambled past the end of the bed, avoiding going alongside it. He did not want to be trapped by the intruder. More by instinct than vision, he knew that another blow with the club was coming as the figure leapt at him in pursuit. Jack ducked down low to the floor and, believing offense the best defense, threw himself forward, meeting his attacker with the point of his right shoulder as if he intended to tackle him.

Jack had the man around the upper thighs and with continued pumping of his legs strengthened by all his bicycle riding, he was able to drive the man backward before both fell to the floor.

In close proximity, Jack felt he had the advantage by using the foot-long, heavy Maglite as a weapon. The longer club, wielded by the attacker, was at a distinct disadvantage. Letting go of the man's thighs, Jack grabbed a handful of shirt and rapidly lifted the flashlight alongside his head with full intention of striking the man's forehead. But as he raised the flashlight, its beam had illuminated the man's face. Luckily, before Jack struck, his mind quickly fired the right neurons and recognized the man. It was Craig.

"Craig?" Jack shouted in disbelief. He swiftly brought the light down from its threatening position and shined it on Craig's face just to be certain.

"Jack?" Craig sputtered in return. He raised his free hand to shield his eyes from the blinding light.

"Good God!" Jack voiced. He let go of Craig's shirt, directed the flashlight away from Craig's face, and got to his feet.

Craig got to his feet as well. He went to a wall switch and turned on the light. "What the hell are you doing here, sneaking around in my house at whatever the hell time it is?" He looked over at the bedside clock. "Three thirty in the goddamn morning!"

"I can explain," Jack said. He winced at a stab of shoulder pain.

Tentatively, he touched the area, finding a point of tenderness at the juncture of his collarbone and shoulder.

"Good grief," Craig complained. He tossed what turned out to be a baseball bat onto the bed. He came over to Jack. "God, I'm sorry I freakin' hit you. I could have killed you. Are you all right?"

"I've had worse," Jack said. He glanced over at the bed. What he'd thought had been Craig was merely pillows and bedcovers. "Can I check it?" Craig asked solicitously.

"Sure, I guess."

Craig took hold of Jack's arm and gently put his hand on Jack's shoulder. He rotated Jack's arm in its shoulder socket, then raised it slowly. "Any pain?"

"A little, but the movement doesn't make it worse."

"I don't think anything is broken, but an X-ray wouldn't hurt. I could drive you over to the Newton Memorial if you'd like."

"I think I'll put some ice on it for now," Jack said.

"Good ideal Come on down to the kitchen. I'll put some ice in a Ziploc bag."

As they walked along the upper hallway, Craig said: "My heart is going a mile a minute. I thought you were one of these guys who'd broken in and manhandled my daughters, who was back to carry out his threat. I was ready to knock you into the next county."

"I suppose I thought you were one of those guys as well," Jack said. He noticed that Craig was wearing a dark-colored bathrobe and not the black ninja outfit Jack had creatively imagined. He also felt the gun in his jacket pocket knocking against him. He'd not thought of it in the fury of the moment, and it was a good thing.

Craig got Jack set up with an ice bag. Jack was sitting at one end of the couch, holding the cold pack against the point of his shoulder. Craig collapsed at the other end, holding a hand against his forehead.

"I'll get out of here so you can get back to sleep," Jack said. "But I owe you an explanation."

"I'm listening," Craig said. "Before I went to bed, I went downstairs to check the apartment. You'd pulled the linens off the bed. I certainly didn't expect you, and especially at this hour, and especially not sneaking around upstairs."

"I promised Alexis I'd check on you."

"Did you talk with her tonight?"

"I did, but not until quite late. Frankly, she's worried about your mixing alcohol and sleeping pills, and she should be worried. I've autopsied a few people, thanks to that combination."

"I don't need your advice."

"Fair enough," Jack said. "Nonetheless, she asked me to check on you. To be honest, I didn't think it was necessary. The reason I was seemingly sneaking was because I was afraid to wake you for fear you'd be angry I was there."

Craig took his hand away from his face and gazed at Jack. "You're right about that."

"I'm sorry if I offended you. I did it for Alexis. She was afraid you might be more upset than usual after what happened at the trial."

"At least you're honest," Craig said. "I suppose I should see it as a favor. It's just hard with what's going on. I'm being forced to see myself in an unflatteringly different light. I was a miserable, ridiculous, self-defeating witness today. When I think about it in retrospect, I'm embarrassed."

"How do you think the afternoon went with the defense experts?"

"It was reasonable. It was nice to hear some positive words for a change, but I don't think it was enough. Unless Randolph pulls off an Oscar-winning performance with his summation tomorrow, which I personally believe he's incapable of, I think the jury is going to find for that bastard, Jordan." Craig sighed despondently. He was staring at the blank TV screen.

"I had another reason for coming out here at this late hour," Jack said.

"Oh! And what was that?" Craig asked. He turned to look at Jack. His eyes were glazed, as if he was ready to cry but too embarrassed to do so. "You haven't told me about the autopsy. Did you do it?"

"I did," Jack said. He went on to tell Craig a truncated version of the day's events, starting with the exhumation and ending with the meeting with the toxicologist. He didn't tell Craig as much as he'd told Alexis, but the gist was the same.

As Jack spoke, Craig became progressively riveted, especially about the toxicologist and the possibility of the involvement of criminality. "If the toxicologist could find some drug or poison, it would be the end of this malpractice nonsense," Craig said. He sat up straighter.

"No doubt," Jack said. "But it is a very, very long shot, as I explained. Yet if Patience did not have a heart attack, it opens up the possibility of many more potential agents. The other reason I came out here tonight was to look at the box of bedside biomarker assay devices in your doctor's bag. Is there any reason you can think of that your result could have been a false positive?"

Craig raised his eyebrows for a moment while he mulled the question. "I can't think of any," he said at length. "I wish I could, but I can't."

"The lab supervisor at the hospital asked me if the one you used tested for both troponin I and myoglobin or just troponin I."

"It's the one with the myoglobin. I chose to stock that one for the reason the lab supervisor mentioned — namely, it gives a result in as little as two hours."

"Is there a shelf life for those devices?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then I guess we'll just have to limit the possible agents to those capable of causing a heart attack."

"What about digitalis?" Craig suggested.

"I thought of digitalis, for sure, and it was part of the screen. So digitalis was not involved."

"I wish I could help more," Craig said. "One of the worst parts of being sued is you feel so helpless."

"You could help if you could think of any cardiotoxic drugs Patience or Jordan might have had access to."

"She had quite a pharmacopoeia in her medicine cabinet, thanks to my absent partner, Ethan Cohen. But all those records were turned over in discovery."

"I've been through those," Jack said. He got to his feet. Relaxing for a few minutes seemed to make his legs feel heavy and sluggish. It was obvious he was going to need some coffee before the night was over. "I better get back and see if the toxicologist has had any luck, and you better get back to bed."

He started for the door.

"Are you going to work all night?" Craig asked, accompanying Jack.

"It looks like that," Jack said. "After everything that's happened, I wish I could be certain of some positive result, but it's not looking likely."

"I don't know what to say other than thanks for all your effort."

"You're welcome," Jack said. "And it's been positive despite the problems I've caused and the whacks I've taken. It has been nice to hook back up with Alexis."

They reached the front door. Craig pointed down toward the study. "Should I run and grab my doctor's bag so you can look at the biomarker assay box?

I'm sure it's the same box. After this fiasco, I'm not making many house calls."

Jack shook his head. "I'm good. You told me what I needed to know."

"Will we see you in court tomorrow?"

"I don't think so. I've got some pressing personal plans that are dictating I take the first shuttle back to the Big Apple. So let me say, good luck!"

Jack and Craig shook hands, having become, if not friends, a bit more knowledgeable and appreciative of each other.

THE RIDE BACK into the city a little after four a.m. was a mirror of the ride out. There was traffic on the Mass Pike but very little once in the city along Mass Ave. It took Jack less than twenty minutes to get all the way to the medical examiner's office. He parked right on the side of the building in a reserved space, but since he would be leaving at such an early hour, he didn't think it would matter.

Security recognized him and let him in. As he climbed the stairs, he looked at his watch. It was coming down to the wire. In less than two hours he'd be on the plane, taxiing away from the terminal.

Walking into the library, Jack did a double take. The place was in considerably greater disarray than when he had left. Latasha looked as if she were cramming to take her medical specialty boards. There were numerous large books that she'd gathered from around the office lying open

on the tabletop. Jack recognized most. They included standard internal-medicine textbooks, physiology books, toxicology books, and pharmacology books. The case file material that Jack had organized was now randomly spread out, at least according to his eye.

"What the hell?" Jack questioned with a laugh.

Latasha's head popped up from an open textbook. "Welcome back, stranger!"

Jack flipped the covers back on a couple of the books he didn't recognize.

After he saw the titles, he reopened the books to where Latasha had them.

He took a seat opposite her.

"What happened to your shoulder?"

Jack was continuing to press the Ziploc bag against his bruise. By now the bag contained mostly water, but it was still cool enough to be of some benefit. He told her what had happened, and she was appropriately sympathetic for him and inappropriately critical of Craig.

"It wasn't his fault," Jack insisted. "I've been so consumed by this case for a variety of reasons that I never stopped to think of what a harebrained idea it was for me to go sneaking into his house. I mean, this is after someone else had broken into it and terrorized his kids to give him a message that they'd be back if I did an autopsy. And I just did the autopsy, for chrissake. What was I thinking?"

"But you were a houseguest. You'd think he'd make sure who he was hitting with a baseball bat."

"I wasn't a houseguest any longer. But let's drop it. Thank God no one got hurt any more than a shoulder contusion. At least I think it is just a contusion. I might have to get my clavicle x-rayed."

"Look on the positive side," Latasha said. "You certainly made sure he wasn't comatose, you know what I'm saying?"

Jack had to smile in spite of himself.

"What about the biomarker assay kit? Did you find out anything?"

"Nothing that raised the possibility he'd gotten a false positive. I think we have to assume it was a legitimate result."

"I suppose that's good," Latasha said. "It eliminates a lot of potential lethal agents." Her eyes swept over the books she had arranged around her.

"It looks like you've been busy."

"You have no idea. I got my second wind with the help of a few Diet Cokes.

It's been like a great review course in toxicology. I haven't studied this stuff since forensic boards."

"What about Allan? Has he called you?"

"Several times, to be exact. But it's good. The more I hear his voice, the easier it is not to drag up old memories and get pissed."

"Has he had any luck?"

"Nope. Not at all. Apparently, he's trying to impress me, and you know something? He's not doing such a bad job. I mean, I knew he was smart and all back in college with his majoring in chem, math, and physics, but I didn't know he'd gone on to get a Ph.D. at MIT. I know that takes a few more brains than medical school, where perseverance is the major requirement."